Five True Statements is exactly what it sounds like, a discussion about the most recent episode of ‘Better Call Saul’ centered around five undisputable statements of fact. Mostly undisputable, at least. I would never lie to you on purpose. Especially not about ‘Better Call Saul.’
1. Mike Ehrmantraut is not here for your hooey, no matter who you are.
Examples in this episode of Mike not being here for people’s hooey, ranked from least to most cranky
Cranky: Mike roasting various Madrigal employees’ beans over temperatures and straps and such.
I like that Mike has decided to take his new job — which, again, pays him very handsomely to provide security and consulting for a drug cartel, with a position at a large conglomerate as a front — so seriously that he spends half his days running around the facilities playing safety inspector in the trucks and warehouses. He doesn’t have to do all that. I know he wants the job to look real, and there’s probably a big chunk of him that has to do it so his piles of drug money feel “earned” through real legit labor, but he doesn’t have to be such a stickler about everything. There are other people at Madrigal whose real, actual jobs are to do those things. But they’re not doing them right, or at least not to Mike’s standards (the people who work in those warehouses must hate him so much), and so Mike must be Mike and correct things.
Very cranky: Mike telling Gus to cool it with the damn games even though he was surrounded in an empty lot by angry cartel murderers at the time
We’ve discussed Gus Fring’s chess maneuvers a few times already this season. The man sees the angles and plots moves out three or four in advance, which gives him an advantage over hotheaded shooter-types like the Salamancas because he can trick them into starting a territory battle that they’ll lose even if they win. Mike, though, has no interest in being tinkered with or run through hoops or intimidated. Just tell him what you want, Fring. The man has refrigerated trucks to check, for the love of God.
Very, Very Cranky: Mike ripping a therapy ruse to pieces.
You knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold that in. You knew from the second he mentioned it at breakfast, how one of the members of the therapy group was making up stories to soak in the pity and/or sympathy the group provided, that Mike was going to call him out. Maybe not this week, but definitely soon. Then the guy — played by Marc Evan Jackson, most recognizable as Shawn from The Good Place or Raymond Holt’s husband Kevin on Brooklyn Nine-Nine — started talking and Mike’s lip started twitching and that was that. Sorry, buddy. Time to find a new crop of suckers. Officer Mike of the Anti-Hooey Task Force strikes again.
2. You can’t give a schemer too much free time.
The thing about a schemer, a guy like Jimmy McGill, is that the gears are always cranking. He can drown out the noise a bit if he keeps himself busy enough or if he has a temporary flash of good old American work ethic (temporary being the key word), but if you put him in, say, an empty cell phone store in the middle of a desolate strip mall and give him nothing to do but bounce a rubber ball off of a wall, he’s going to scheme. It’s just the way he’s wired. In hindsight, painting the storefront with a very thinly-disguised siren song to drug dealers was a pretty harmless scheme, in the whole grand design of things. Sure, his boss might not be pleased, initially, but at least the goal of this was to sell more cell phones and not, like, rob the guy’s house and sell his stamp collection to a fence who works for an underworld veterinarian, you know? Gotta pick your battles, bud.
3. I would watch an entire movie about the Cousins
Or one episode of this show. Or maybe an entire pre-prequel just about them and their rise and their decision to wear suits everywhere. I love those guys.
That’s why I was so torn by their drughouse raid. On one hand, just hearing the chaos without having a visual on most of it was cool because it allowed my imagination to run wild. “What was going on in there?,” I thought as the sounds of shouting and automatic weapons filled the air. It left a certain amount of mystery to the two of them, which plays well because it adds a Bill Brasky-esque layer to the raid that makes it more fun, in a way. Two guys march in with a bag of guns and walk out unscathed 90 seconds later, give or take someone else’s blood on their technicolor designer suit. They’re like something out of John Wick.
On the other hand, I wanted to seeeeeeeeeeeee.
Both valid points.
4. I hope that judge always delivers bummer lessons about life and the law through movie analogies, to the point that it becomes a thing that people start to expect.
JUDGE: Have a seat, son.
YOUNG LAWYER: Yes, your Honor.
JUDGE: Let me tell you about a case I once had. Two young men were accused of murder. Their lawyer, if you can call him that, was a slick-talking little guy from New Y-
YOUNG LAWYER: My Cousin Vinny!
JUDGE: What? Yes. No. Wait. Let me finish. So the kids look guilty, and everyone kind of knows it, but he calls h-
YOUNG LAWYER: Mona Lisa! The positraction!
JUDGE: Dammit son, will you let me finish?
YOUNG LAWYER: Marissa Tomei was the bomb in that movie.
JUDGE: [rubs temples] I’m trying to say you’ll never get a case like that and your life as a public defender will be spent cutting the best deals you can to send guilty youths to prison.
YOUNG LAWYER: Yoots.
JUDGE: Excuse me?
YOUNG LAWYER: [Joe Pesci voice] Send guilty yoots to prison.
JUDGE: Get out of my office.
5. Nacho is kind of the new Jesse Pinkman now, what with the way he’s getting beaten down into dust by a ruthless meth dealer, and how I feel bad for him all the time even though he’s a criminal and a murderer.
Discuss.
